No Matter What Trump Does, Green Energy Will Prevail

Tavis Coburn

Acts of God are on the rise. Insurers now pay nearly four times as much to policyholders hit by natural disasters as they did in 1980. That’s because God has had a major assist from fossil-fueled industrialization. With the Paris climate agreement, the world’s emitters sought to slash carbon across the public and private sectors. The US Clean Power Plan targets coal; China is enacting a cap-and-trade system; India is betting big on solar. The deal sends a clear signal to companies: Invest in green business models. After Donald Trump was elected, more than 360 companies signed a letter urging him to uphold the agreement. Many are hewing to it anyway. Google will reach 100 percent renewable energy in 2017; Facebook and Amazon are following suit. Business leaders will aim to sway Trump from his anti-green stance with economic calculations. Investing in clean energy isn’t just imperative for the environment—it’s essential for US competitiveness.

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Snapchat Will Matter More Than Ever

Tavis Coburn

First your parents learned how to text, because you stopped picking up the phone. Then they got on Facebook so they could see what you were up to at school. And they’re about to find you on Snapchat. For hyperconnected #teens, snapping is like talking—only with videos, doodles, and filters. Sure, everyone’s on WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger and Instagram too. But Snapchat is where people share what’s happening in their lives in real time. Meanwhile, Snap Inc., the company, is growing: Last year it released Spectacles, the camera-glasses that have become the season’s must-have millennial accessory. They capture the world the way people see it—which is thrilling to watch. And as of this writing, Snap was rumored to be going public, so we can expect it to push for more users and revenue. This once adorably inscrutable app is suddenly poised for global domination. So get ready for your parents to complain that if you really loved them, you’d keep the snap streak going.

Whatever You Do, Devices Will Always Be Listening In

julian glander

We had computers on our desks, then our laps, then in our pockets. Starting now, computers aren’t a thing anymore. They’re everything. And everything will be listening, from your phone to your speakers to your TV. All those devices will get smarter and more personal too: Order “the usual” and they’ll know you mean a large Hawaiian, side of breadsticks. You won’t even have to know which device you’re talking to. Just shout your wishes into the air and wait for them to come true.

1. The Bluedouches will take over
Your headphones will be wireless. And you’ll never stop wearing them, because they’ll connect to your voice assistant, your fitness tracker, and your universal translator. Last time we tried the “wear something in your ears all the time” thing, we got the Bluedouches. Guess that’s all of us now.

2. Your clothes will be gadgets
Thanks to tiny batteries and tinier sensors, your Under Armour shoes will tell you how many steps you took, and you’ll change the song by swiping your hand across the sleeve of your Levi’s jacket. Because fitness bands will refuse to die.

3. Your house will be smart …
Telling Alexa to turn off the lights is just a first step toward Alexa knowing when to turn them off without you even asking—right before starting the popcorn and loading the next episode of The Man in the High Castle.

4. … But your smart home will be weaponized
Connectivity opens smart home devices to cyberattacks. While your Nest is likely safe (you’re receiving automatic security updates, right?), most internet-of-things things can be vulnerable. Hackers have used exploits to cut heat to entire apartment buildings during freezing conditions, mess with fire alarms, and conscript IoT devices into malicious botnets.

Russian Cybertricks Will Only Escalate

Russia hacked our election and got what it wanted: The spies believed to have stolen and leaked thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee last year injected chaos and distraction into Hillary Clinton’s campaign and doubt into the minds of American voters about the legitimacy of the US electoral process. And the victory of Putin’s preferred presidential candidate means the Kremlin’s information warfare tactics will only get more aggressive. “They’re weaponizing information for the purposes of influencing elections,” says Dmitri Alperovitch, CTO of security firm Crowdstrike, which was the first to link the Russian government to the DNC hack, months before US intelligence agencies confirmed Russia’s involvement. “They’re going to absolutely attempt to do it again.” Unlike in that other cold war, the security world has yet to settle on a form of mutual deterrence. So expect escalation: not only outright hacking and social media disinformation in countries like Germany, France, and the Netherlands that have approaching elections, but also subtler data sabotage and maybe even attacks on physical infrastructure. (The mayhem of a few leaked emails looks tame in comparison to the kind of hacker-­induced shutdown that hit a Ukrainian power plant in late 2015.) The Obama administration promised to keep Russia in check. Donald Trump’s friendly approach to Putin and dismissal of promises to defend NATO allies have practically dared Russia to press its luck.

Swarms of Drones Will Black Out the Sun

tavis coburn

Drones are here, and they promise to change the world: beaming the internet everywhere, accelerating warfare, transforming televised sports, and, yes, shuttling impulse buys to our doorsteps. They’re already delivering packages to online shoppers in China and blood to hospitals in rural Rwanda. But in the US, the prospect of terrorists using UAVs to launch bombs or wireless malware attacks has spurred strict rules: no flying beyond the operator’s line of sight, at night, or over people. Now regulators are slowly giving commercial drones more liberty. In the past six months, the FAA has granted over 200 waivers exempting pilots from restrictions. CNN can glide over crowds; BNSF Railway can fly out of the pilot’s view; HBO can film at night; Disney World can choreograph a drone light show. Pilots for Project Wing, the forthcoming drone delivery service from Google parent Alphabet, can fly up to 20 drones at once in a designated area. (Last fall, it teamed up with Chipotle to test burrito delivery at Virginia Tech.) And this year, the FAA is expected to reassess the rule barring flight over people, portending a future of drone utility inspections and Amazon deliveries from above.

Let’s Face It: The American Way of Driving Is Over

julian glander

For decades, the car has been the all-American signifier of who you are, a declaration of independence, a place where you are master. Now American innovation is leaving this tradition in the dust. Ride ­hailing, self driving, data mining: Technology is taking the wheel. Enjoy the ride.

1. Self-driving cars will be everywhere
There are honest-to-goodness self-driving Ubers ferrying passengers in Pittsburgh; Baidu’s fleet of autonomous electric taxis is zipping around Wuzhen, China; and commuters in England and Sweden will start whizzing along the highways in Volvo carbots.

2. You will be tracked
Insurance companies will use smart dashcams and tracking devices to adjust your rates. And now that electric vehicles pose an existential threat to gas taxes, state governments will experiment with mileage-­based taxation.

3. Power trains get a power-up
Expect 15 pure electric models to hit the US market this year, including the modestly priced and longer-ranged Chevy Bolt and Tesla Model 3. But petrol-based propulsion isn’t going away. It’s getting better. Nissan Infiniti’s insane (and insanely complex) variable-compression engine—which wrings diesel-­level oomph and efficiency out of a 2-liter turbo gas power plant—goes into production this year.

4. Public transit will team up with startups
Last fall, the bedroom community of Summit, New Jersey, launched an Uber pilot program offering parking-­pass holders free rides to a nearby train station. We’ll see more partnerships between ride-sharing services and public transportation.

5. Robotrucks hit the highway
Self-driving trucks outfitted by Otto—a startup Uber acquired last year—are making deliveries. The first? Fifty thousand cans of Budweiser. But truckers won’t be totally out of work yet; Otto’s rigs can self-drive only on the highway. Ten-four, good botty.

Gender Barriers Will Continue to Break Down

Our new vice president has spent much of his career fighting gay rights. And the pain of his election for LGBTQ people is irrefutable. But here’s the thing: Culture is marching on. From modes of dress to pronoun use to gender roles, the world is breaking out of rigid binaries. We have a new crop of icons—trans rocker Laura Jane Grace of the band Against Me!; CoverGirl’s first cover boy, James Charles; Transparent’s Hari Nef—whose stars will continue to rise. (And we can’t wait to watch Laverne Cox play an Ivy-educated lawyer on the CBS drama Doubt.) What people can do is no longer tied to the sex they’re assigned at birth. Gender may not be over, but its limitations soon will be—no matter what Mike Pence tries to do.

Congress Will Screw Up Privacy—and We Will Resist

Across the country, evidence lockers are filling up with smartphones that contain potentially critical crime-solving information. But they’re locked, and at the moment it’s not clear whether the government has the right to require built-in access channels. True, the Apple-FBI showdown over the passcode-protected iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters ended with the agency backing down. But the transition to a Trump White House and a Republican-dominated Congress all but guarantees new legislation. (Remember, Trump is serious about “the cyber.”) And that’s worrisome: Congress seems unable to account for the nuance of tech evolution—last April it proposed legislation that would essentially make personal encryption illegal. But as pressure from law enforcement and intelligence agencies mounts, legislators will be more likely than ever to construct laws that bulldoze protections, whether that’s forcing companies to break their own security protocols or putting back doors in the encryption standards adopted by your favorite messaging apps. This is the year everyone—not just techno-libertarians in tinfoil hats—becomes a privacy advocate.

Designs Aimed at the Rest of the World Will Do Us Good Too

For years tech giants have designed products and services for connected Westerners and then adapted them for the rest of the planet. But that’s changing, because the users coming online around the world—Silicon Valley calls them the Next Billion—are not like you. And their relationship with technology is fundamentally different from yours. Consider India. In 2015 the country surpassed a billion mobile phone subscriptions, but most users still endure download speeds hundreds of times slower than connections in the US. To Google, this problem looked like an opportunity, so it sent a team to India to reimagine YouTube with simple menus, large video thumbnails, and lively and responsive sharing functions that work even without a connection. Last September, in Delhi, it launched YouTube Go, a nimble app with a dead-simple interface that lets users view and share videos phone-to-phone, sans internet. “I call it reverse innovation—designing specifically for the developing world and doing it there first,” says business strategy expert Vijay Govindarajan. “The way automobiles changed America 100 years ago, the mobile revolution is going to change India.” Eventually these better, smarter projects will find their way back to the West, making them good for the Next Billion—and good for you too.

Concerts Will Be Our Soap Operas, Broadcast on Social Media

In recent years, the tightly choreographed, super-expensive stadium shows that have long been a music industry staple have morphed into multicity soap operas. Will Drake ignite (or defuse) a new beef? Will Taylor Swift strut out (and/or show off) one of her superfamous surprise-guest pals? What will Adele talk about during her off-the-cuff midset monologues? Will Bruce Springsteen try to set yet another live-show run-time record? All of these outings featured story lines that were played out between songs and then broadcast worldwide via social media, where they kept the artist in the news cycle long after the last encore had faded. And they were likely inspired by perpetual tour-de-forcer Kanye West: The confrontational/inspirational midshow spiels that were a staple of his 2013–2014 Yeezus tour proved that even the most prefab spectacle could find time for moments of unforced, unpredictable storytelling, not to mention moments of actual suspense. And while West’s Saint Pablo tour was cut short by decidedly more pressing dramas, we hope his next outing has a happier ending—and we expect more artists will take his cue in 2017, turning the stage into a place not just for noise but for narratives.

The Microbiome Isn’t Just About You Anymore

You already know that you have a microbiome: the bacteria that live in and on your body, subtly (and not so subtly) influencing your health. But while you’d probably love to know what germs are going to make you thinner/healthier/more regular, human microbiome therapies are going to be slow to work their way through the FDA’s approval process. Don’t hold your breath for a magic germ pill. And don’t be so self-centered. See, everything has a microbiome, whether it’s a subway platform or a cornfield. Luckily, research that can help us understand those communities will hit the market a helluva lot faster. One company, Indigo, has been analyzing the bacterial composition of agricultural staples to see how pesticides and fertilizers may have changed the balance of the plants’ symbiotic bugs over time. Indigo then concocted new combinations of germs intended to help crops grow faster or in harsher conditions (it harvested its first crop last fall: 50,000 acres of drought-resistant cotton). Meanwhile, scientists at the Argonne National Laboratory are applying similar research to create healthier, more robust bug populations in hospitals and homes. Call it community immunity.

Crispr Will Give Humans Genetic Superpowers

tavis coburn

Biologists worldwide have fallen in love with Crispr for its rapid, efficient gene-editing powers. Now they can swiftly engineer mouse strains with certain defects, letting them study diseases (and explore potential treatments) more easily than ever before. Cures for humans are next. The Crispr startup Editas Medicine expects to launch its first clinical trial, for a congenital eye disease that causes blindness, this year. They’ll load up a virus with tools to snip out the mutated gene, then inject it into a person’s retina. And the US National Institutes of Health has already approved the first wide-scale trial of a Crispr-based cancer treatment: Scientists at the University of Pennsylvania will remove T cells from cancer patients, make three edits, then reintroduce these immune responders back into the body to detect and attack cancer cells. In China, researchers have already made similar tweaks to white blood cells to tackle cancer. But they’re also pushing into dicier territory, using the technique to modify human embryos—and thus potentially future generations. Scientists in the US may be fiddling with similar sorts of heritable modifications in mice but have no plans to do so in people. For now.

Attention Hackers: Software Will Protect Itself

For all the bits and bytes involved, cyber­security is a human endeavor. To protect our networks and email and banking apps, we need flesh-and-blood programmers. The trouble is, humans can’t possibly find and patch every single hole—or even find them fast enough. So online services continue to get hacked. But last summer, Darpa, the research arm of the US Department of Defense, ran the first hacking contest open only to security bots (submitted by their human handlers) that can patch holes on their own. Turns out, the bots can find simple bugs faster than human engineers—and in some cases they can pinpoint the most complex of security holes, bugs that shape-shift every second. The contest included one of these tranformers, and a bot built by researchers in Southern California managed to both find and patch it. That means bots will be able to fix security holes with a speed that was never before possible. And the security industry is now putting its weight behind the idea. This will eventually make online services safer. And your data will be safer too.

No, You Won’t Get Your Own VR Rig

Tavis Coburn

Plunking down a grand or more on a high-end headset and PC might seem tempting, but given all the kludges and cables still involved, this won’t be the year for your Personal Immersion Cave. Instead, you’ll be piggy­backing on other people’s R&D budgets—and planning VR date night. At places like Salt Lake City’s “hyper-reality” theme park, the Void, visitors will be able to battle ghosts or roam temple ruins that are mapped perfectly to their real-world stage. Imax is planning a handful of VR theaters, and HTC is pushing to put its Vive headset in cafés and arcades all over the globe. Eventually the tech will have a place alongside—or in lieu of—your home theater. Until then, though, the biggest investment you’ll be making in VR is a babysitter and tickets to leave real reality behind on a Friday night.

We’ll Fight a New Kind of Drug War

johnny cobalto

Criminalizing drugs is as American as doing them. But the days of outright prohibition are over, as the prescription opioid crisis has burned through the suburbs and drastically shifted the public’s notion of addiction. “Opioid addiction is more relatable than the past perception of heroin junkies lying in the street,” says Katharine Neill, a drug policy expert at Rice University. Reframing drug abuse as a public health problem rather than a criminal one has prompted reform-minded legislation from both parties. And while prescription meds are now being held at arm’s length, recreational drugs are being embraced. Eight states voted to legalize weed in some form in the last election, bringing the total to 29, and researchers are studying the drug’s medicinal applications for everything from migraines to multiple sclerosis. Loosening attitudes toward illicit drugs aren’t limited to weed: Researchers are also testing psychedelics for treating mental disorders like PTSD. While Donald Trump has pledged to combat the opioid crisis by improving access to treatment and abuse-deterrent painkillers, his appointees have also called for stricter marijuana enforcement and drug sentencing. Good luck with that: Such a hard-line stance would run counter to state reforms—and the $6 billion marijuana industry.

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